A Furious Devotion

The Life of Shane MacGowan

By: Richard Balls

Narrated by: Dan Calley

Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogues' notorious front man from outcast to national treasure has never been told - until now.

A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan vividly recounts the experiences that shaped the greatest songwriter of his generation: the formative trips to his mother's homestead in Tipperary, the explosion of punk that changed his life, and the drink and drugs that nearly ended it.

As well as exclusive interviews with Shane himself, author Richard Balls has secured contributions from his wife and family and people who have never spoken publicly about Shane before: close associates, former girlfriends, and the English teacher who first spotted his literary gift. Nick Cave, Aidan Gillen, Cillian Murphy, Christy Moore, Sinead O'Connor, and Dermot O'Leary are on the rollcall of those paying tribute to the gifted songwriter and poet.

©2021 Omnibus Press (P)2021 Tantor

Great book, awful narration

The mispronunciations are easily in the hundreds. Can’t they find someone familiar with the subject an genre? Does anyone listen to this before they release it?

The outstanding story and this extraordinary journalist’s coverage of it.

I liked the level of detail. And the edge of your seat suspense…will they outsmart the bad guys or not.

Fantastic story, wonderful highs & shocking lows!

The story is wonderfully entertaining, well written telling the tale of a unique and extremely talented song writer. The Pogues were an amazing band who's music continues to entertain and the lyrics are just as powerful to hear today as they were 30 years ago.
The narration though is abysmal. it was like he stepped in at the last minute to cover someone else. The names of people and places horribly mispronounced. It should be redone and this version destroyed.
Despite it all the story is so good that it is worth a listen.

Fascinating story, unfortunate narration.

I'm a huge Pogues fan, so this was a must have. I read James Fearnley's "Here Comes Everybody" several years ago and just recently finished listening to the audiobook version. That was great because James narrated his own book. (Though some might be turned off by his deliberate, unemotional style, I quickly got into it and enjoyed hearing Fearnley's low-key Mancunian-accented delivery. I'm American, btw.) This story is just as riveting--and offers a different angle on the band and the perspective of many others in Shane's orbit. And, of course, it goes into far more detail about Shane's life outside the Pogues. Unfortunately, the narration of A Furious Devotion is very off-putting. The narrator reads every sentence in the same odd cadence--a series of declarations with an uptick/emphasis on the final word. The best way I can indicate it on the page is "da-da-da-da-da-da DA [pause] da-da-da-da-da-da DA [pause] da-da-da-da-da-da DA..." Over and over and over again. The only time he breaks out of it is when he is quoting someone--and in those passages he comes to life and is quite good at making it sound like a real person is sitting there relating an event or giving an honest opinion. But then, when he's back to describing events in the third person, the droning cadence continues. But worst of all is that HE MISPRONOUNCES A BAND MEMBER'S NAME. He pronounces Cait O'Riordan's name as "Kate." It's supposed to sound more like "cot" (rhymes with "hot"... at least to my American ears). Now I must confess that I long thought it was pronounced "Kate" too. But if you are going to be the professional narrator of an audiobook heavily focused on a particular band, I'd think the least you could do is make sure you are pronouncing the names of the band members right. Every time he says "Kate" I want to turn off the narration and reach for the print version (which I also own). I read later that this narrator--who is quite in demand in certain genres--doesn't like to read books in print before he narrates, preferring to dive right in cold. In this case, a little more prep would have been appreciated.

Amusing but inconsequential error near the end: The author refers to Martin O'Malley as the former governor of Baltimore. Obviously, none of the proofreaders were American... O'Malley was former mayor of Baltimore (a city) then governor of Maryland (a state).